


The Optimist

by Nanoochka



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Erik Lehnsherr is an actual disaster, Eye Contact, First Meetings, M/M, POV Erik Lehnsherr, Shame AU, kind of, strangers on a train
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 17:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21324274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanoochka/pseuds/Nanoochka
Summary: Two strangers meet on a train.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 10
Kudos: 96





	The Optimist

**Author's Note:**

> Rolling into the X-Men alternate timeline fandom 8 years late with Starbucks.
> 
> Thanks to R.C. and insidious-intent for reading and encouraging me that, yes, I absolutely should write the subway scene from _Shame_ with Erik and Charles so we can die of secondhand embarrassment all over again.

The heating’s busted on the F train for the third straight day in a row. Every morning brings new delays—signal problems, workers on the tracks, giant alligators from the sewers, probably—but the MTA has the heat cranked up to 90 in the middle of January. Erik is sweating beneath his scarf and heavy wool coat. His fingers itch to remove his outer layers even if he’ll just have to put it all back on again in a few stops. The most he allows himself is to tug his scarf a little farther away from his neck. It makes zero difference. 

His eyes rest momentarily on a homeless man asleep in a corner seat, snoring. Too far away to smell, though people have left a cautious, anticipatory buffer around him they pretend not to notice. Erik glances away to stare blindly at a subway advertisement he won’t later recall, and somewhere at the back of the car, a fellow passenger is playing their music at an obnoxious volume. Amid the shriek and grind of the train and a hundred-odd people speaking in surprisingly hushed voices, as if Monday mornings invite churchlike reverence to which not even New Yorkers are immune, the exaggerated bass and monotonous beat throbs above it all, too tinny for a soundtrack but too loud to ignore. A muscle tics in Erik’s cheek that radiates tightness through his jaw. He breathes in deep through his nose. On the kitchen table at home, now several blocks south, his earbuds lie forgotten. He could be listening to Bach or Wagner or Dvořák. He could be throwing that asshole’s iPhone onto the tracks. 

The mental picture is vivid enough that he doesn’t, for at least a third of his commute, notice the man sitting across from him until he scans to the left, expecting further monotony and finding, instead, tousled hair just beginning to show grey, pale skin with a smattering of freckles across the nose. Erik focuses on a distractingly pink mouth and the bluest eyes he’s ever seen, defying even the most exhausted of clichés and fixated similarly on nothing. Perhaps no more than thirty, the man is dressed professionally like many others on the train, on every other train in the city. Like Erik. His navy peacoat, grey trousers, and checked button-down shirt are so ubiquitous as to be invisible. What stands out most about him is the sheer devastation of his face.

It violates every protocol to stare like this. Erik knows he’s breaking some kind of social pact, would want to crawl out of his skin if he witnessed it happening to another, but he can’t help himself. He stares as the train squeals to a stop at the next station, as it shudders back into motion and continues its journey through dark tunnels and overbright lights that strobe by, backlighting the indelible graffiti on the windows. He stares even as the man happens to glance his way and his eyes widen in surprise to find himself observed, then skitter away in embarrassment like any normal person should. Erik stares as the man happens to risk another look up and their gazes meet. 

But then, against all odds: a smile.

What might initially be politeness shifts when the man registers that Erik isn’t looking away, that this isn’t one of a hundred million accidental silent encounters that occur on the MTA every day, every hour. Erik has lived countless such encounters, smiling amiably at babies and children, old couples, the odd person with whom a look of commiseration is shared whenever something awkward or peculiar happens on the train, which it always, always does. This is not that. A bomb could go off next to his ear right now and Erik wouldn’t look away. 

The man seems to realize it too. His smile falters to something more uncertain, but then he breaks eye contact only to flick a glance over the rest of Erik’s person before returning to meet his stare head-on again. Wariness lingers as he considers Erik back, perhaps questioning his own judgement, though only momentarily. The smile returns, and it is knowing; pleased. If he was handsome before, that self-assured smirk transforms him into another animal altogether. 

Erik can’t even bring himself to smile back—does he look predatory or merely captivated?—and the train slows, stops, starts again before the man withdraws once more, though only to lean his head back against the windowframe with that same small tilt to his lips. Minutes have passed, longer than Erik can recall having ever looked at another person in this way. When the man slides his gaze back to Erik, looking at him from down his nose, they could be watching one another from across a darkened club or a bedroom. A vein throbs in Erik’s neck.

Despite himself, his mouth quirks as the stranger relinquishes his gaze to focus elsewhere. The smile never leaves him as he pointedly looks everywhere but at Erik, inviting his attention the way a cat will indifferently turn its back to you as its tail flicks deliberately once, twice, against your wrist. 

Around them other passengers continue reading, listening to music, staring into space as though Erik’s heart isn’t beating hard enough to rattle his chest. His body temperature no longer has anything to do with poor MTA maintenance, but to loosen his scarf now would be to admit a kind of defeat. 

The man returns his gaze to Erik, almost: he lazily drags his eyes again down the length of Erik’s body and settles somewhere in the vicinity of Erik’s hands, draped over his lap. His eyebrow quirks and he wets his mouth, teeth dragging slowly over his apple-pink bottom lip as he smiles like someone’s just whispered a secret in his ear, something cruel or funny or dirty enough to bring a blush to his cheeks. Slowly he adjusts himself, uncrossing his legs. The way he splays his knees apart is not even enough to be labeled manspreading, but after several minutes of prolonged eye contact, can’t be read as anything but filthy. 

Erik shifts minutely in his seat. Noticing, the man flicks his eyes back up to his face. Like a curtain drawn shut, the smile flickers, fades. He’s expressionless save for the bright stain on his cheeks as he hesitates, then stands to grab the pole next to where Erik is sitting. Already the train is beginning to slow as it pulls into Rockefeller Centre Station.

Their fingers brush, warmly; Erik all but flows up out of his seat to stand behind him, but he grips the pole tentatively, like it might suddenly burn him. It’s a cautious contrast to the line of the man’s back against his chest as they press themselves together, until, emboldened, the man moves his hand until it covers Erik’s completely. 

Erik releases a shaky breath through his nose at the hot, dry press of his fingers, the broad, confident weight of his palm. He’s short, this stranger, the top of his head barely level with Erik’s eyebrows, and his hair smells faintly of minty shampoo and cologne where it just brushes Erik’s nose. For a long moment, Erik could bury his face there, breathe him deep into his lungs until this moment is as permanently embedded in his mind as the smell of his mother’s kitchen when he was a boy, the deep warm notes of his father’s cologne. 

Before Erik can lean closer, the doors slide open, and the man steps away. He falters for a second as he lets go of Erik’s hand, then surrenders to the crush of people exiting the train like a leaf borne downstream. Helplessly Erik follows. He uses his height and size to push his way past other commuters, several times losing sight of that tousled head, which twice turns back to look at him. Their eyes meet again, but this time the smile is not one of welcome but regret.

By the time Erik gets to the top of the stairs leading out of the station and to the real world above, the man is gone.

+

The heating is fixed the next morning. Uncovered, the exposed hollow of Erik’s throat feels vulnerable against the cooler air of the train as he boards at his usual entrance, sits in the precise same seat as yesterday, which is surprisingly vacant along with the one beside it. Gone is the homeless man sleeping in the corner seat; commuters unthinkingly fill the space where they left such a wide berth before. No unfiltered hip-hop suffuses the train, though Erik’s forgotten his earbuds yet again and the promise of distraction along with it. As if to compensate, the drone of conversation around him is slightly louder, gaining bravado with the week’s momentum.

It is a game, excruciatingly and deliberately played, to survey the train and its passengers, to contrast what he sees with the previous day. Erik’s pulse kicks up as he lingers on a group of Hasidic Jews farther down the car, their black hats and _ payot _ a familiar sight from childhood. Catching Erik’s gaze, lingering, one of them nods. It’s been a very long time since Erik set foot in a temple, but he nods back guiltily around a catch in his throat. All too easy to imagine how his mother would have cuffed him on the back of the head were he to ignore the gesture. Erik may not believe in God any longer, but he isn’t immune to decades of ingrained habit.

Finally he allows himself that which he’s been withholding: the bench at the opposite side of the train. Just as quickly, his hope, lodged somewhere behind his breastbone, sinks. A couple of uniformed schoolgirls occupy the space that has been firmly at the forefront of Erik’s mind for the last twenty-four hours. They are both absorbed in their phones, neither speaking nor aware of Erik’s fraught and frankly pathetic gaze, which he just as quickly returns to the floor in front of him lest it be misinterpreted. He breathes out slowly through his nose and presses his fingers a little harder into the fabric of his coat where it rests over his thighs. With nothing left to observe, Erik closes his eyes and decides the sour taste at the back of his mouth can only be regret.

From behind him there are a few muttered apologies, a man’s distinctly British accent saying, “Excuse me, pardon me,” presumably as he struggles his way through the train. People are rarely that polite, notes Erik with bored interest, then tunes it out just as quickly. 

Unexpectedly someone settles in next to him. They are close, and warm—perhaps closer and warmer than is totally acceptable for even a crowded morning F train. Erik, irritated by the violation of personal space, folds his arms and nudges closer to the wall but doesn’t bother to open his eyes. 

The person beside him huffs. Unbelievably, they shift over to claim the space Erik has just inserted between them, pressing the length of his leg against Erik’s. There is the clearing of a throat even as Erik’s eyes fly open in preparation for telling them to fuck off.

Up close, the stranger’s eyes are even bluer than from across a crowded train, the freckles across his nose more pronounced. 

Surprise sticks in Erik’s throat. He opens his mouth to speak, only to close it again and furrow his brow instead, truly lost for words. He is very, very aware of how fast his pulse leaps from calm to racing, how quickly his body temperature tells him the MTA heating could be in overdrive again.

The man catches his expression. He shakes his head with a chuckle that’s not so much judgemental as rueful, if it’s anything, and Erik is astounded to see the blush suffuse his cheeks from this distance, staining the fair skin all the way up to the tips of his ears. That was a detail he missed yesterday but now can hardly look away from, the kind of blush that probably goes all the way down.

“Hi,” Erik says after far too many seconds have passed. Then, terribly: “You’re here.”

The smirk that nearly undid Erik before is nowhere to be found, and yet it’s still all too easy for their eyes to meet and hold over their shared disbelief. Erik can privately admit the man’s smile is no less devastating even when it isn’t wielded so confidently, revealing slightly crooked teeth and what he suspects is a playfully self-deprecating sense of humour.

“Hello,” says the man. Erik blinks; the accent is British. He returns Erik’s look with a grin slowly curling the corners of his mouth, and there it is, that invitation and promise in one that make Erik’s fingers twitch abortively toward him, longing to reach. As if he can see it all written out on Erik’s face, the man holds out his hand. Erik glances towards it for a moment only before his gaze returns to where it belongs, and the smile is all in the eyes now. “I’m Charles.”


End file.
